Me, The Hubby and our Four Monsters! Sleepless nights, dirty nappies, tantrums, and tears. But also adventures, fun, laughter, and a whole lot of love! Not every day is easy, but every moment is precious. Welcome to My Life as Mumma Walker!

Auntie Rach n my boys Originally uploaded by chiggster We've had a lovely weekend away, visiting my brother in law and his missus. Baby "bean" is due at the end of October and I had a few bits n bobs to take over, plus they've moved recently and it was about time we saw the new place.

Sadly, they live in Birmingham so it's a hell of along drive with 2 kids under 3 yrs, especially kids who are stuffed up with nasty colds, but it was worth it! The house is really nice and I have garden envy - and so does Jack who LOVED playing with the small watering can he found, pots of water, stones, not to mention playing football! He insisted we played on the grass. I think he wants a lawn to play on at home :oD He had a nice walk out with his Uncle Bob and Daddy to the lake and the park, and brought back a conker and an acorn proudly in his pockets, and a feather.

Rachel's looking fab with her pregnancy. She says she doesn't feel it and that she's just wanting it o…

The thing with having kids, and not being at work, is that you can start to loose touch with the outside world. I don't mean never see people or anything, we see our friends and family. But we tend not to watch the news because if the telly is on we've either got CBeebies on, or a DVD cartoon.

So I got a little curious when on my way home from taking the kids to Happy Mount Park with Kathy & Katie I saw half of Skerton cordoned off with tons of police milling about. I thought maybe someone had tried to kill themselves, or fallen into the river or something (I am a shameless rubber necker). Then when I was sat at traffic lights round Kingsway a police van shot past followed by a van reading "Bomb Disposal Unit" ... Here. In Lancaster. Where it's quiet and nice!

SO as soon as I got home (well, ok, after I'd fed and changed Tom and asked Mark to fix some lunch for Jack) I jumped on the t'interweb and tried to find out what had happened. Only the local p…

I've not said much about the kids in my last few posts, so I'm going to put that right!

Jack's started talking now, he's coming out with more and more every day. It's great! You can tell easily what things are the most important to him. Like food... he can say ham, cheese, fish fingers (sort of, fish is very clear), jam, biccy, sweetie, teddy-in-car (liquorish teddy bears are kept in the car) and loads more that he'll repeat when we ask him if he wants something and he does want it. He says "Hi mama" and "Hi Tom" and sometimes even "Hi daddy". He can say nana and pape, and is getting closer with grandma. We've got bye bye, ta ta, night night. Please and Ta. More juice please. So food, family and greeting are covered! He will also ask us to "press play please" when we put a DVD on. He can say DVD and the names of some of his favs. He even says "'scuze me" when he trumps! He'll ask us to "play pl…

It's been playing on my mind more and more. I think because by the time Jack was the age Tom is now I was very close to starting work. I'm not going back until Feb, but I hate not knowing what's coming. So I asked to meet the boss and we had a meeting on Monday. I took Tom to show him off!

It's no secret that I was very unhappy at work for year before I went on Mat Leave with Tom. In fact, I have not been totally happy ever since I went back to work after having Jack. I had a few happy weeks where I was a training officer, but thanks to the credit crunch that job stopped existsing and I was promoted to ops manager. I hated it. The hours were too long, it couldn't be done part time, and the pressure was huge. I said at the time the job was better suited to a young man with no kids, i.e. someone with the time, energy and no vital commitments. And Iw as right, the guy I thought would be better suited to the job was given it when I stepped down and is doing a great job…

I have finished sewing and stuffing my lavender bags. They still need some trim to finish them off, but that will have to wait a couple of weeks until I have some cash to spare.

I have started to make a small bucket bag. I'd planned to finish it tonight, but badly badly burned my finger today cooking the sunday roast so sewing is out of the question until it heals. Typing is hard enough! Here it is so far:

Hubby is steaming ahead with his quilling. Here's a few bits he's done the last couple of nights:

Butterfly HouseOriginally uploaded by chiggster
My mum came over yesterday so we took the kids up to Williamson's Park. Tom dozed through most of it, but Jack had a great time. We went on the playground first and Jack ran round and round there and played with his football. Then we had a very over priced lunch (with the slowest service in Lancaster) before having a wander around the butterfly house, mini beast house and small mammal pens.

Well, when I say wander..... mum cuddled Tom and I followed Jack round while he charged round at 100 mph! He did enjoy it though, he counted the fish and birds, and was intregued by the crisalis case, and liked watching the stick insects tank get cleaned. He was a bit tired by the time we got to the bunnies and guinniepigs so he didn't really spend any time looking at them, just runing round the pens until his little legs almost gave out!

I got loads of photos and mini-vid clips on Flickr if you wanna look :o)

The hubby has a craft! The last few times we've been down to Hobby Craft he has been gazing longingly at the Quilling sets. (wanna know what quilling is??) To be honest - and I've said this to him - I really didn't think he would have the patience for quilling but he's kept on coming back to it saying he's really really like to give it a a go. So I bought him a beginners set (at a rip off price of over £30, only to find it for £20 on ebay after, grrrrr), and I have been prooved wrong!

Have a look at these lovely, delicate, detailed snowflakes!

So now our evenings are spent with us crafting together! Which is really nice as it happens, although it SOUNDS very middle aged (although, I'm now 30something and he'll be 40 next year, so maybe we ARE middle aged) and gives us a whole new topic of conversation (much needed since neither of us are venturing out to work at the moment, and we share 24 hours of the every). He longer rolls his eyes every time I want to sho…